No decisions on Gelang Patah, Wangsa Maju

MCA boss Chua Soi Lek said Umno has held talks on the two seats but a final decision has not been made.

KUALA LUMPUR: MCA president Dr Chua Soi Lek today admitted that the party’s Gelang Patah and Wangsa Maju seats were being placed on the negotiation table with Umno, but stressed that no final decision has been made yet.

At a press conference after chairing a MCA meeting today, he said Umno did hold talks with MCA over the Gelang Patah seat, but said the chance of Umno to contest the Johor seat was only “50%”.

This fuelled earlier speculations that MCA would make way for Umno to field its Johor Menteri Besar Abdul Ghani Othman to face off with DAP supremo Lim Kit Siang.

“We haven’t made any decision on this. If you ask me whether Umno would contest the seat, I would say possibly yes, possibly no. The chances are 50:50,” he said.

He said likewise for Wangsa Maju, negotiations were still ongoing and he just met Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak to discuss about this yesterday.

He said Umno demanded the seat in Kuala Lumpur because Malay made up more than 50% of the voters there.

When asked to comment about Wangsa Maju MCA’s call to boycott the BN election campaign should MCA’s Yew Teong Look is dropped from contesting, Chua said he understand the sense of frustrations among grassroots members.

Asked again whether Yew would stand a chance of contesting as Umno is nominating Najib’s political secretary Mohd Shafei Abdullah for the area, he replied: “How do you know Umno is sending Mohd Shafei?”

“When I ask the prime minister yesterday, he said they haven’t fixed the candidates list yet,” he said.

The former health minister said BN may release its final list of candidates list Monday or Tuesday.

On the Pandan parliamentary seat in Selangor currently held by his arch rival Ong Tee Keat, Chua said BN has not decided on its candidacy.

Chua has previously announced newcomer Gary Lim as the MCA candidate there, but Ong insisted that he would be running as the direct BN candidate.

He also clarified that MCA has agreed to loan out the Tronoh state seat in Perak to MIC.

“We are thinking of letting them [MIC] to contest in either Jelapang or Tronoh,” he said.

Meanwhile, Chua has dismissed rumours that MCA would surrender the Tebrau and Padang Serai, both parliamentary seats, to other BN component parties.

He said the party would only let go of the Kuantan parliamentary seat (to Umno), Tanah Rata state seat (to Gerakan), both in Pahang, and Kota Laksamana state seat (to PPP) in Melaka.

He said in return, the party has been given the Luyang state seat in Sabah and Ketari state seat in Pahang.

However, he expected the total number of MCA seats to increase after the general election as Election Commission is likely to conduct a constituency delineation exercise.

“After the delineation exercise, the number of seat will increase. So we will be getting more seats,” he said.